Barbara Kingsolver Quotes

Enrique felt a successful man needed no imagination at all.

Estevan took off his shirt and lay back against the front of the boat, his hands clasped behind his head, exposing his smooth Mayan chest to the sun. And to me. How could he possibly have done this, i...

Even the bells from the churches have a conversation, all ringing at once.

Even this far inland, New Jersey was still recovering from Hurricane Sandy, which in its time, a few years back, had been called the storm of the century. How foolish it seemed now to label anything o...

Every few weeks I get a letter from Léopoldville, which holds me on track. My heart races when I see the long blue envelope in a sister's hand, delivered to me under her sleeve as if a man himself wer...

Every one of us is called upon, probably many times, to start a new life. A frightening diagnosis, a marriage, a move, loss of a job... And onward full tilt we go, pitched and wrecked and absurdly res...

Everyone wants the tallest tree to fall

Eyes can pierce a skull.

Father stared at the trees, giving no indication he’d heard his poor frightened wife, or any of this news. Father would sooner watch us all perish one by one than listen to anybody but himself.

Feminine' was a test like some witch trial she was preordained to fail.

First thing in the morning, last thing at night, whenever a fight with Tig left her in pieces, it had been her mother who put Willa back together. When someone mattered like that, you didn’t lose her...

First, picture the forest. I want you to be its conscience, the eyes in the trees. The trees are columns of slick, brindled bark like muscular animals overgrown beyond all reason. Every space is fille...

For God’s sake, man, Ovid nearly shouted, the damn globe is catching fire, and the islands are drowning. The evidence is staring them in the face.

For my part, I merely watched young, deprived female bosoms panting before my handsome husband, soldier of the Lord. (I longed to shout: Go ahead and try him, girls, I am too tired!)

For six years, from age nineteen until I turned twenty-five, I did not sleep uninterrupted through a single night. . . . I felt lucky to get my shoes on the right feet. . . . I moved forward only, thi...

For the first time in her life she could see perfectly well how a person arrived on that flight path: needing an alternative to the present so badly, the only doorway was a high window.

Forgive me, Dellarobia. It’s a selfish habit. I never learn anything from listening to myself.

From the fallen tree everybody makes firewood.

GM [genetically modified] plants are virtually everywhere in the US food chain, but don't have to be labeled, and aren't. Industry lobbyists intend to keep it that way.

God doesn’t need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves.